Per its entry at the Mike’s Amazing World of Comics web site, the comic we’re discussing today originally reached America’s spinner racks on January 20, 1976. But even though one can’t tell it from artist Dave Cockrum’s very fine cover, once we turn to the opening splash page we find that, three weeks into the new year, the All-New, All-Different X-Men were somehow still celebrating the December, 1975 Christmas season:
As with all commercial comic books of this era, “Merry Christmas, X-Men…” would have been both written and drawn a couple of months ahead of publication; given that, as well as the bi-monthly publication schedule that had been afforded the newly revived X-Men title, one probably shouldn’t be too surprised at this scheduling mishap. And anyway, why make a fuss? Let’s just enjoy the classic holiday tableau that Cockrum, writer Chris Claremont, and inker Sam Grainger have given us for what it is — which, among other things, is a fun opportunity to play “spot the cameo”. Along with all the out-of-uniform mutant heroes, see if you can find Matt (Daredevil) Murdock, Nick Fury, the Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, and (this is kind of a hard one), an ice-skating Doctor Doom. Oh, and per the late artist himself (as reported in the 1982 book The X-Men Companion: I), that’s Dave Cockrum and his first wife, Andrea Kline, standing just in front of Fury and Val.
And here on page two we have even more cameos — this time, in the form of interlopers from Marvel Comics’ greatest rival, DC Comics. In the bottom left corner of the last panel above, you can see Clark Kent and Lois Lane; standing directly behind them is DC editor Julius Schwartz. (Interestingly, Clark and Lois — who of course are usually to be found in the fictional city of Metropolis — were also shown to be visiting New York in another comic published earlier this same month, Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man.)
Ah, the 1970s, when women didn’t have to worry about the intentions of strange men stalking them! Or, at least, when male comic book creators didn’t believe that they needed to do so. (For the record, both of the young women introduced here — Amanda Sefton and Betsy Wilford — will be seen again, with the former ultimately becoming a significant figure in the X-Men’s mythos.)
If your humble blogger recalls correctly, Frank Miller once made a remark to the effect that Wolverine’s face made for such a great visual on its own that it was a shame to ever cover it up with a mask. While that may be true, one should remember that the mask (originally designed by John Romita for the character’s debut in Hulk #180-181) came before the face, which we are in fact seeing in this scene for the very first time.
It’s generally agreed that in visualizing what Wolverine looked like under his headgear, Dave Cockrum “borrowed” from his own previous work — specifically, for his redesign of the superhero Timber Wolf, a member of DC’s Legion of Super-Heroes. Previously depicted with facial features and a hairstyle comparable to those of most male DC heroes of the 1960s, Timber Wolf had been given a decidedly more “wolfish” appearance by Cockrum in his first crack at the character, which appeared in Superboy #197 (Sep., 1973) (see panel detail at right).
Other than Wolverine’s hair being colored black rather than brown, the most striking difference between him and Cockrum’s Timber Wolf is his obviously greater age, which would seem to be no less than thirty. This is a departure from how at least one of Wolverine’s co-creators — writer Len Wein — had originally conceived the character, as he’d meant Wolverine to be a teenager (see, again, The X-Men Companion: I).
“We’ve been together almost a year…” Even if you assume that time has passed in the Marvel Universe at the same rate as in the one we live in, Scott’s statement seems a bit of a stretch, given that his and Wolverine’s first meeting in Giant-Size X-Men #1 was published just nine months ago, in April, 1975. But, hey, let’s take him at his word — though if we do, then, speaking from a contemporary perspective — and in consideration of how much activity the X-Men have crammed into the last fifty years without any of them visibly aging as much as a decade — that “almost a year” seems like an extravagantly luxurious span of time for the team to have logged only, what, four discrete adventures? Jeez, what else have they been doing all this time?
Oh, well… at least we know now that Scott, if no one else, is still concerned about the traumatic events that had gone down with Havok, Polaris, and Eric the Red in the last issue preceding this one… not to mention that all three characters remain in the wind. On that topic: while I’d eventually become accustomed to Chris Claremont’s tendency to set up story situations and let them simmer for a while (sometimes for a long while… and, if memory serves, on at least an occasion or two, forever) before getting around to resolving them, back in ’76 it was a little jarring to see our mutant heroes merrily celebrating the holidays immediately following what had felt like a cliffhanger ending to X-Men #97. You certainly wouldn’t catch the Avengers, Fantastic Four, or Defenders behaving that way; at least, you wouldn’t in 1976.
And the cameos continue… though, appropriately, the co-creators of Scott and Jean, i.e., Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, at least each get a actual line.
Meanwhile, far below, the Sentinel blown apart by Cyclops’ optic blast crashes onto the pavement, alerting Banshee — the one other X-Man who’s encountered the giant mutant-hunting robots before this — as to their danger. With a quick sonic shout, he obliterates his own outerwear, and then…
Soaring into the sky, Storm is able to rescue the still dangling Scott just before he falls. As she flies him to relative safety on a nearby rooftop, he tells her that Banshee and Wolverine have already been swept up and away by a group of Sentinels (gee, that was fast). At that point, another Sentinel descends to finish the job of terminating Cyclops, but meets unexpected resistance from the unfamiliar powers of Storm:
And here we have what I believe are the last of this issue’s cameos. “Chris” is almost certainly intended to be none other than Chris Claremont, while “Bonnie” is likely Marvel colorist Bonnie Wilford, who was married to Claremont at the time (and who shouldn’t be confused with Betsy Wilford, the presumably entirely fictional character we briefly met back on page 2). Given that we don’t see either character’s face, these two cameos may well have been retrofitted onto Cockrum’s art at the scripting stage.
Peter Corbeau, director of Project Starcore, had been knocking around the Marvel Universe for a while at this point, ever since first being introduced in Hulk #148 (Feb., 1972) in a story written by Archie Goodwin with a plotting assist by Chris Claremont — though I’m pretty sure that this is the first story that’s mentioned a personal connection between him and Professor Charles Xavier. As for Corbeau’s yacht, the Dejah Thoris, it of course takes its name from the Martian princess of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Barsoom” novels.
The impact of the Sentinel’s attack drives Peter Corbeau deep underwater; when he finally regains the surface, it’s just in time to see the giant robot flying away with the captured Professor X. Clinging to the wreckage of his vessel, he glumly contemplates a two-hundred mile swim to the nearest shore.
“His readings are nothing like the others!” At this point in Wolverine’s development, Marvel’s storytellers were still figuring out the specifics of his nature and powers — and the working hypothesis was that, rather than regular ol’ human mutant, he was in fact a mutated wolverine. That idea was ultimately discarded, leaving this incident of Lang’s equipment’s atypical readings an unexplained mystery.
Yes, it’s another first for Wolverine this issue, as we learn for the first time that his claws are actually part of him, rather than (as originally conceived by Len Wein) built into his costume.
In The X-Men Companion: I, Chris Claremont recalled how he initially wasn’t planning to make any big deal about Wolverine’s claws retracting into his hands, rather than his gloves — but was moved to reconsider by his editor:
When I wrote #98, Wolverine pops the claws out of the back of his hand. I just did it. Marv [Wolfman] says, “Wait a minute, Chris, shouldn’t the other X-Men react to this?” I went, “Oh yeah, I guess they should.” [laughter] So I wrote the scene where Banshee goes, “My god, the claws come out of the back of your hand! You never told us!” “You never asked.” And that crystallized Wolverine’s response to everything. He does not volunteer information to anyone.
Meanwhile, the incident of Wolverine making the drastic alterations to Jean Grey’s dress could have been left as just a throwaway comedic bit — but, in retrospect, it can be seen as Ground Zero for what would eventually become a significant element of both of their characterizations — i.e., the mutual attraction between them.
Ignoring Jean’s concerns for the moment, Banshee grabs both her and Wolverine and barrels on towards their hope of freedom…
And that ending is a cliffhanger for sure, wouldn’t you say? For that reason, I’m happy to report that, if Chris Claremont felt any temptation way back when to leave the fates of Banshee, Jean Grey, and Wolverine unresolved for a few issues, he resisted it. And so, we’ll pick things up right where they left off here when we take our look at X-Men #99… though, seeing as how that won’t be until May (when we’ll be covering the milestone 100th issue as well), let’s hope that our imperiled X-Men are really, really good at holding their breath.
I have a vivid memory of stumbling across this one in a Cleethorpes newsagent in April ’76. In those days before discovering the fan press I was not even aware of the new X-Men, so this was completely unexpected and a huge thrill.
Cleethorpes for you, Congleton (Cheshire) for me. Like you, I hadn’t known about the advent of the New X-Men and wouldn’t get to read the previous issue until August of ’76 when I picked it up off a spinner rack – along with #100 – at a newsagents in Stranraer (whilst on a caravanning holiday with my parents). I THINK that I bought #99 from a schoolmate some time later, but my memory is a bit hazy on that one.
Great find! I missed 99 but found 100 that summer in (another) Cleethorpes newsagent.
Back then, seaside resorts were good places to find comics that were a year or two old as distributors dropped off their unsold stock. I was fortunate to live on Cleethorpes seafront and had easy access to the bazaars.
Yes, in the UK comics arrived 3 to 4 months after their publication in the US so we saw this Christmas story in April! I caught some of the cameos but not all, thank you for filling me in on the ones I’d missed. I had really enjoyed issue 97 but my excitement and anticipation went stratospheric with issue 98. Both the writing and art were on fire. The depiction of Jean using her vastly increased powers as a yellow/orange glowing figure was so much more impactful than any previous rendition and her expression after Wolverine slashed her dress was priceless. I couldn’t wait for issue 99 to be published to find out how the situation would be resolved – but that was 2 months away. This was something special and I was fearful that the title would be cancelled like so many of my other favourite comics, in hindsight I had nothing to worry about.
I can’t add the picture here, but Cockrum’s depiction of the aura glowing around Jean as she uses her powers is pretty clearly an homage to Neal Adams’s nearly identical depiction of the Scarlet Witch using her powers against the Sentinels in X-Men #59 from 1969.
Minor point: that was Jean in Wanda’s costume. Cyke was wearing Quicksilver’s and Beast was wearing the Toad’s. They switched costumes because they figured they would have a better chance if the Sentinels were attacked with a different power set than expected.
You are right, of course. My poor memory.
I remember picking this one up from a stall in Bishop Auckland market place in April 1976. I was aware of the All New X-Men via issue number 8 of FOOM but this was the first comic I purchased in the new run and I still have it. It is battered but I have to admit they were a consistent addition to my reading for two decades after purchasing this one.
The moment I learned Wolverine’s claws were part of him was a seismic shock back then. Kids these days can’t imagine.
For that matter, the return of the Sentinels — only their fourth appearance — was way more chilling than I’d find them a few years later when they and the Kill The Muties attitude they embodied were “It’s Tuesday.”
That said, this was a terrific issue. And Jack’s comment was spot-on — Scott and Jean never kissed in the Silver Age run.
“It’s Tuesday” – I have to ask if this is a common expression that I’m not familiar with for something that has become common-place or mundane. Referring back (yet again) to the Buffy musical episode ‘Once More With Feeling’, when Buffy learned that her sister had been abducted by the demon Sweet, her resigned response was: “Dawn’s in trouble, it must be Tuesday”. Is this just me, missing something?
Not being altogether familiar with the Sentinels’ history back then, I didn’t find them all that chilling, to be honest. Like Jean says, the X-Men were quite easily ‘chopping them to bits’, so I didn’t really understand why they were considered such a threat.
Also noticed that when Wolverine breaks free of his shackles, he promptly lays into a bunch of unarmed (and unarmoured) underlings with his claws at full extension (“take him, you fools.. he’s only one.. AARRRGH!”). I thought the idea that he maimed and killed human foes without compunction wasn’t really explicit until the Byrne period?
Oh, and one little example of a writer and artist’s ‘failure to communicate’… Wolvie’s dramatic “Fine with me bub. Only this time I got my feet on the ground… an’ Sentinel-baby, that makes all the difference.!” As he dramatically leaps into the air with his feet very clearly… off the ground.
I could have sworn it was older than this, but according to the “Holy Internet,” the expression came about in 1994 and is attributed both to the Street Fighter movie with Raul Julia and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show. In Street Fighter, the villain M. Bison (played by Raul Julia) tells the heroine Chun-Li: “For you, the day I was born was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday”. In Buffylore, the saying originated from the fact that Buffy aired on Tuesday, therefore if something horrible happened, it must be Tuesday, because that was the day Buffy aired. I hope that helps. I learned something myself.
I thought it came from the 60’s movie “If it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium”.
Not according to our High Overlords at Google. Sorry.
I only vaguely remember the movie, just the title, so after reading your response, I checked on Microsoft Copilot and it says it was originally a CBS documentary before the movie, used for predictable chaos, which is decades before Street Fighter or Buffy. Maybe that is why they used Tuesday, or maybe it was a coincidence.
No, the title refers to a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it European tour — Monday you’re in Paris, Tuesday it’s Belgium, no time to stop and see anything really.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064471/?ref_=mv_close not a bad movie . . . .
Anything with a young Suzanne Pleshette is a plus.
I’m not sure how common it is. I use it quite a bit because for me it sums up so many things in comics that are now routine (e.g., Gotham City in flames was shocking in DKR; now “it’s Tuesday.”)
The idea of Wolverine as a ruthless fighter firmed up fairly early; when he says in the Doomsmith story that he’ll chop whoever’s responsible into pieces, I took him seriously. In this case I imagine they went with the old fudge that we don’t know for absolute sure the injuries were that awful.
You have a point about the Sentinels — if I didn’t know they exist to destroy mutants, I might not have been that impressed. They did explain their poor showing later of course (Lang cobbled them together while lavishing his attention on the X-Sentinels).
Yeah, I’d agree Wolverine certainly talked the talk pretty much from day one, but the plot contrivances of comics meant that I don’t think he was ever shown being especially violent towards ordinary humans until the scene in this issue. Kind of like Angel in Boys’ Ranch, early Ben Grimm or the Hulk, there was supposedly an air of danger about them but somehow (thank you Comics Code and the morals of the time) it never quite materialized. Most fans would point to the much-hyped ‘killing of guards’ in the savage land Claremont/Byrne arc as the point when Wolvie’s lethal tendencies became explicit, but that one panel just jumped out at me (loved that ‘..AARRRGH!’ in lieu of visible gore or graphic detail).
Don, thank you for the effort you made regarding ‘must be Tuesday’. Now that I had time I duplicated your research and ended up in much the same place. It’s such a useful and transparent expression that it really does feel like it should be older.
The title of the story of FF #166 was..
‘If it’s Tuesday, it must be the Hulk.’
(which i can recall baffling me on first read)
Superb blog Alan, thank you
If I remember correctly, Jean hugs Scott in *X-Men* #52, when she sees that his Erik the Red masquerade succeeded with Magneto and Mesmero.
Still, according to the song, a kiss is just a kiss, and nothing is said about whether a hug is just a hug “as time goes by.”
Superman used to have “Untold Tales.” No one has ever satisfactorily established for me when Scott and Jean became a couple. I know that since “Elegy” in *X-Men* #138 that it’s been set as occurring on the walk through Central Park in “Beware the Juggernaut My Son” (#32) and *The Wedding Album* in the 1990s reaffirms it, but that scene ends with Scott sensing that Jean cares for him…and Jean wondering whether Scott wants her love, or just her pity. (Claremont’s gloss on it has Scott remembering an airplane incident, which certainly isn’t in the original. Oh, for the days when we accepted that characters like Scott and Peter Parker had parents once but didn’t have them now. Wobble my webs and call me shaky!)
During the brief break-up of the team (#48), they do have a cover of Jean as a model from a small town with a jealous boyfriend in Scott (deathless lines: “Scott! You’re early!” Fellow model: “A hunk of man like that is never too early!” Eighty-two issues later, Dazzler will address Cyclops as “hunk”), but there aren’t reflections on how one or the other wishes they weren’t pretending…and then in #60, they are simply together,. with no more details than Scott’s lament that they wasted a lot of time because of his hang-up about his optic blasts.
I’d welcome an “Untold Tale” in which we saw the love acknowledged and requited, and that Scott loved Jean as William Butler Yeats loved Maud Gonne, whom he called in one of his poems “my phoenix.”
(The poem is “The People.”)
Brian Cronin has made the same point about their relationship in a couple of his columns. I’ve noticed the same sort of awkwardness with Peter Parker and Betty Brant — they’re obviously dating for a while but there’s none of the typical elements you’d expect. They almost always interact at the Daily Bugle, they never show any physical contact …
Yes, an Untold Tale of Scott and Jean would be fun.
Funny that you should mention this, because in the mid-1990s, Marvel published a series called Untold Tales of Spider Man which covered stories from Spider Man’s early days when Peter Parker was still in high school. There is a lot of material in these issues showing Peter Parker and Betty Brant dating outside of the office. E.g., https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Untold_Tales_of_Spider-Man_Vol_1_12
I read them all about a year ago on Marvel Unlimited. I found them quite interesting and good.
Read ’em back when they came out, and yes, they are.
Anybody else notice that the Stan Lee faces in this issue were drawn by Marie Severin?
I was just wondering about that. I wasn’t sure and was going to ask.
“Damn you, Bobby Rose!”
That’s my immediate recollection when I think of X-Men #98. I say that because Bobby was a comic reading buddy who purchased the issue one day before me and proceeded to spill every bean and nugget from it the next day at school. Before I’d left Freshman English, I knew about Wolverine’s claws, Jean’s dress and the cliffhanger.
Still, none of that dimmed my excitement when I read this issue for myself. With poor distribution in our area, this was the first issue I’d seen since #95. I didn’t know Moira or about Kurt’s image inducer and had no idea what to think of Wolverine unmasked. But they all seemed so much more fleshed out as characters, with a distinctness unlike what I saw in other Marvel comics.
Being a Sentinels fan, having them rendered by Dave Cockrum was a dream come true. For that matter, Cockrum’s art nailed every scene, confirming his status as my favorite artist at that time. I wasn’t as familiar with Chris Claremont’s work at that time, but his story definitely had my attention.
The only disappointment I had was that I’d have to wait sixty days for the next issue – and the first of my subscription – to arrive.
Thanks for the mid-week treat, Alan!
What a great issue. Sure, it missed the mark a little bit on the “holly jolly” of it all, but still a fun time. Not a big fan of Sam Grainger’s inks here. He seems to overdo the texture lines on some of Cockrum’s faces (particularly Professor X) and makes them look too dark, more like shadows instead of contures. Still, when the rest of the comic is this good, it’s hard to complain.
I don’t know how long it had been since the Sentinels had actually graced the pages of an X-Men comic at this point, but I remember thinking at the time that the Sentinels were an “easy-out” for the X-Men team. Can’t think of what to do this month? Bring the Sentinels back! Much like the way Englehart kept bringing Kang back to torment the Avengers again and again, the Sentinels were a plot device that could quickly seem over-used. Still, having the mutant-hating robots show up at Christmas was an interesting diversion and even at this early point, Claremont had most of the main X-Men’s character traits and budding relationships down cold. Looking forward to #100 in May, Alan! Thanks.
This was their first battle with the X-Men since their 1968 clash with the Larry Trask improved Sentinels. They’d appeared in-between in the Avengers for one multi-part story. Like I said in my comment, still underused enough to be impressive.
In hindsight this story foreshadows how much bigger anti-mutant sentiment would be during Claremont’s long run than it was when Stan or Roy were writing it. Ultimately it got so heavy it smothered any enjoyment in the book but it was still fresh here.
You’re off a year: the battle with Larry Trask-led Sentinels (Ricky, don’t lose that number and Larry, don’t lose that medallion) took place in 1969, not in 1968. (Pedantry unleashed: the Sentinels fought the X-Men in issues #14-16 and #57-59, and took on the Avengers in *Avengers* #102-04.)
Incidentally, Peter Corbeau is in a small company: at the time of this story, only three people had won the Nobel Prize twice: Marie Curie, Linus Pauling and John Bardeen.
Fifty years later, he’s still in a small company, with their ranks now including Frederick Sanger and Karl Barry Sharpless.
I wonder whether Peter shared one of his Prizes or both of them.
By the way, Corbeau means “Raven” in French. Wolverine probably knows that, as well as that the Japanese word for raven is “Karasu.”
Has nobody ever written a story about the circumstances that led to an ice-skating Doctor Doom? Seems a natural for a Christmas edition.
I loved this X-Men run and had been on board since the Giant-Size issue, but this one was my favorite issue yet for all the action, drama, cameos (even though I didn’t catch them all at the time), and the revealing items about Wolverine. Just reading this post excited me almost as much as when I bought it off the rack.
Sadly, my local store stopped carrying them a few months later and distribution lagged prior to ceasing altogether. I only made it to the 100th issue and only picked it up sporadically after that, but I still loved every sporadically purchased issue. Thanks for sharing this post and bringing it all back.
Like your UK correspondents, this arrived in the Antipodes in the month appearing on the cover (it was only when comic shops opened locally a couple of years later that I discovered that US readers saw them months before). Having missed the Giant-Size and #94, this was a title which was going places fast – an interview a decades back had Claremont saying that because of the issue number they started afresh on, they had to pack a lot in, since #100s had become special issues, and they needed to set up the situation in time to have it all happen in #100.
I remember feeling quite pleased with myself for spotting most of the cameos, but in retrospect can’t help wondering how convenient it was to have Betsy and Amanda just happening to the be passing (as in, they were probably just so-called normal at the time, but Claremont could never leave anything alone…).
And in 2019 Marvel published Marvels Epilogue, a one-shot by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross doing the X-Men #98 issue from the POV of someone else (Phil Sheldon and his daughters) who was there…I can recommend it, Busiek has a real way of showing classic material in a whole new light that’s top stuff.
I’ll second that Marvels Epilogue recommendation — it’s a nice tribute to the early days of the “New” X-Men as well as a fine coda to the original Marvels miniseries.
Judging by the line of dialogue Jean Grey says about the X-Men having fought the Sentinels “back in 1969” at this point in time Chris Claremont was writing X-Men as if it took place in real time. In interviews, Claremont has observed that way back in the mid-1970s he had no idea the series would become insanely popular and run for decades, and as such some of his decisions, such as tying Storm’s origin to the Suez Crisis of 1956, were ones he might not have made if he’d had any idea about how the series would continue to be published to the present day.
Anyway, this is a really great story, but I imagine the bimonthly publishing schedule must have been absolute murder on readers at the time. Dave Cockrum was an amazing artist, at least in my estimation, but unfortunately (as has been observed on this blog before) he was never very fast, which is why X-Men remained bimonthly for so long. I know when Cockrum later returned to the book in the early 1980s it was then monthly, but at that point I believe he was only doing pencil breakdowns, plus there were several fill-in issues on that second run. I’m glad that I was able to read these comics as one big story in the Essential X-Men collection.
Still, a number of years ago I asked Claremont to autograph a page of original art that Cockrum drew and he wrote for the DC series Sovereign Seven, and Claremont immediately launched into a very warm reminiscence about Cockrum. I believe Claremont even said that he had wished Cockrum had been a faster artist, but it’s clear that after all the decades Claremont still genuinely regarded his former collaborator in good terms.
A friend of mine says Len Wein also spoke glowingly of Cockrum in a later interview, described GSXM#1 as “90 percent Dave”
Even some of the best comics can drag a bit, but not X-Men#98. You get to the end wanting more.
X-Men got so much right, from overall storylines to the little details…and I loved those cameo way back when, and of course Jack and Stan not only came up with Scot, Jean and Charles, but the Sentinels too! However any re-introduction of the Sentinels would have been done with the classic Thomas/Adams/Palmer 3-parter in mind (issues #57 to #59). In fact it would have been nice to have had a cameo of Roy and Neal included with all the others.
Cockum is Mr 70s for me, and his art is so on point for the time….but Nightcrawler in his Errol Flynn guise…I really don’t see the likeness! And Stan of course is provided by Marie….this was the face of Stan that I knew….in fact when I saw the photos of Stan in earlier periods ( from early 60s and bearded Stan from late 60s) I didn’t recognise Stan at all at first!!
Otherwise why on earth would you go out 200 miles from shore on a fishing trip?? I am obviously not into swimming…or have a mind of a Nobel prize winner that would contemplate swimming that distance!
WHo was Betsy revealed to be? I’m blanking!
Brian Cronin have a feature on the issue in hand: https://www.cbr.com/the-x-men-solved-two-major-wolverine-mysteries-50-years-ago/
I hadn’t seen that unused take on Wolverine’s face by John Byrne before — nice going, Mr. Cronin!
For about a year, I missed several issues of the X-Men, starting with #98, then 100, then 105 – never saw any of them on the racks of the Navy Exchange where I got my comics at the time. Very frustrating, although I eventually did get 98 & 100. At the time this story came out, my familiarity with the Sentinels was limited to their appearance in Avengers #104 (the first issue of that mag I ever got). I have since read those earlier appearances, and, yeah, in this particular issue the X-Men make short work of the Sentinels rather easily compared to nearly all their other appearances. I found it interesting that in the original Lee/Kirby tale, the Sentinels appear to be about 10 feet tall – big, but not colossally so, but in the Thomas/Adams tale, the new Sentinels appear to be over 20 feet tall – or at least 4 times as tall as an average adult person, and that’s been the standard ever since. Actually, in thinking about those last couple of X-Men stories Kirby had a hand in, featuring the Juggernaut and the Sentinels, there was a growing sense of dread within the mag, with the “world’s strangest teen-agers” having to take on ever more deadly foes. That dark feeling mostly evaporated when Thamas & Roth took over although it seems Thomas tried to bring it back to some degree with his Factor Three storyline and then the “death” of Professor X and continued by Gary Friedrich with the return of Magneto and his revived Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (minus Mastermind). Claremont, thus far, has been interweaving bits of levity with some dark themes, with the death of Thunderbird (albeit, from Wein’s plot) but with this issue in particular beginning the trend of leavening ever greater paranoia that there are many great forces seeking to make life miserable for our merry band of mutants. This is all in hindsight, of course. In early 1976, none of could yet know what further directions Claremont & company would take the X-Men or guess how long Claremont would continue writing the mag in an era wherein most writers tended to only put in only about 4 years at most on any one title before moving on, whether by choice or not, or cancellation of the mag!
Regarding Wolverine’s claws, I don’t recall being surprised at all when it was made clear that the claws were a natural part of him rather than part of his gloves — I think I took for granted that they were a part of him from his introduction in the Hulk. Even if Wein’s initial conception was for the claws to be a function of the gloves, that was never made clear previously. The notions of having him be still a teen-ager and an actual wolverine somehow mutated into a human both struck me as ridiculous. As both a pre-teen and a teen, reading about a team of superheroes who also happened to be perpetual teen-agers (and marketed as such) never appealed to me at all. I certainly couldn’t somehow “identify” with them anymore than I could with clearly older superheroes, especially when the teen-age superheroes still lived in a life-style that was nothing like that of any pre-18 year old teen I knew of – either living with very wealthy benefactors, as with Robin and Batman, or apparently on their own with no parents or guardians, whatever, to answer to, aside from the other members of their particular group as was my impression of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Of the new batch, I perceived Peter as around 18 or 19 and Ororo and Kurt as at least in their 20s, Sean as maybe 40ish, and Wolverine/Logan as at least in his 30s, but certainly not a teenager! Presumably, Claremont hadn’t yet conceived of Logan as well over 100 years old yet! Funny that at this point, even despite the fanfare of his introduction in the Hulk, doesn’t appear anyone at Marvel had predicted that Wolverine would evolve into the big breakout character within another decade. Maybe Byrne did, seeing the possibilities of building on some of the scenes from this issue when he got the opportunity about a year and a half later.
Thanks a million for this!! I MAY have read at least part of this later on and I KNOW I saw some of it depicted as flashback in later issues. I didn’t start reading/buying this until a few issues later. And yes, I know what’s coming up in the Big Hundredth! This takes my memories back to the tail end of my High School days and my (much better, thank you!) college days. Stunning artwork. One of the best runs of one of the best comics ever. Thanks a zillion for this!! (See, you got an increase in the thanks rate!!)
Though I own all of the Adams-Palmer issues (X-Men 56 – 65), and remember the Cockrum issues when they were new I didn’t buy any. I like Wolverine as a character, though he says “bub” a few times to many in this story. There’s one horizontal panel where a shirtless Wolverine is seen running in a three-quarters rear view. What’s funny is that he’s running like a camel – with his left arm and leg both in a forward position. Human beings run with alternate limbs in front and back (left arm forward, left leg back, right arm back, and right leg forward). Will Eisner used to do the same thing with the Spirit which, being semi-comical in tone, he could get away with.
I remember being really excited to get and read this issue when it came out. One of my favorite story arcs in my Silver Age reading was the Thomas/Adams/Palmer Sentinels in 1969 and seeing the Sentinels return to the X-Men especially with Cockrum artwork was special. Another of my favorite Silver Age stories I read when it came out was the Thomas/Colan/Palmer Dr. Strange story set on New Year’s Eve 1968 and the joyful holiday setting suddenly interrupted reminded me of that (by the way, as with X-Men #98, the Dr. Strange issue came out a couple of months after the holiday).
When the New X-Men came out in 1975, I was not happy because I had been a big fan of the original team (I had started reading comics around the time that the Thomas/Adams/Palmer era began). I first found the new X-Men unwelcome interlopers, but by X-Men #98, Claremont was beginning to really win me over with his superior characterization of the new recruits.
When I read this originally, and reading Alan’s recap post, I remember catching most of the cameos, but I certainly didn’t see Dr. Doom ice skating. I do know that this time around for a second I thought I saw a glimpse of the Phantom Stranger on the right on the splash page, but that was a trick on the eyes because he only looks somewhat similar out of the corner of my eye.
Though not in my top tier at the time (it wasn’t written by Englehart, Gerber, or McGregor), X-MEN was moving up on my list of want-to read,” this issue showed a big reason why. It’s clear that Claremont was invested in a long game, and having this three-parter ( I was sure this would lead to issue #100) also tie in to Professor X’s nightmares showed the scope of the canvas he wanted to play with. Couple that with the numerous character bits, and it was clear that my original assessment of Chris Claremont (decent fill-in scripter) seriously underestimated him.
Thanks, Alan!